11 am: While I have been busy trying to figure out ways to make nutritious dishes that require only four minutes and five ingredients, I discover that I have missed out on a phenomenon called Pokémon Go.

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I decide to launch a quick investigation by interrogating my 20-year-old cousin, who like everyone his age, seems to spend half his day either in the bathroom or in the gym, which perhaps also explains why he walks around shirtless most of the time. 

I ask, ‘What the hell is this Pokémon thing?’ My cousin, now on the floor, doing some crunches in order to further perfect the current ‘Let’s all have abs like a segmented insect’ look, begins loudly enunciating each word, like I am deaf — along with being really really dumb — and says, ‘You have to look for Pokémons with your phone and go from one location to another.’ 

‘Ah ha!’, I exclaim, ‘So, like on Easter, we would have a treasure hunt for the eggs and then could eat all the yummy chocolate ones that we had gathered?’  

‘Yes exactly!’, replies my dear cousin. 

‘So when you collect the Pokémons what do you get? Like a cash prize of thousands of dollars or something?’, I ask. 

He looks at me, puzzled, ‘ You don’t get anything.’ 

‘What?’ I screech, ‘Nothing? Not a voucher to get free chips with chicken nuggets at KFC?  Not a Honey Nut Crunch ice cream at Baskin’s with every 10 Pokémons you catch? Come on, there has to be something... a free cookie with your Starbucks, perhaps?’ 

‘Nothing, it’s just the thrill of playing,’ he says. 

Disappointed, I reply, ‘Thrill would be sailing through the skies in a balloon filled with hot air and hope; thrill would be sitting with an old bottle of wine and a brand new man. What could possibly be thrilling about walking on a path to early spondylitis with your neck hunched over your phone looking for yellow, blue and purple cartoon midgets!’ He just exhales disdainfully and finishes another set. 

12.30 pm: Purely for research purposes, I decide to boldly go where every teenager has gone before, to the screen of my phone and download Pokémon Go.

1.30 pm: Running errands, I pass a temple near my house which seems to be crammed with worshippers and just as I begin marvelling at the devoutness of this large group of Indians all gathered to pray at lunch time, I look at my phone and discover that on the dome of the temple, there lies Pokémon Go’s pokestop, and that all the people gathered with their heads bowed worshipfully, are actually just hunching  over their phone screens waiting for virtual prasad in the form of pokeballs. Hey Ram! 

3.15 pm: Ready to play, I start walking all over Juhu with dear cousin looking for Pokémons and pokestops. The streets are full of groups of Pokémon Go players and I realise how engaging it can be, because  we walk such a long distance that we have to hail a yellow-and-black open chariot in order to get back home. 

5 pm: Waiting at the traffic light, I put the game on and it shows me a pokestop at JVPD bus stop, I get off onto a narrow pavement and start rushing towards the bus stop till I come to a sudden halt. 

I look down, I am now standing in the middle of a large muddy pothole, but I am not alone, there is a torn packet of Pan Parag floating merrily beside me and a piece of poop (in its soggy state, I cannot be sure if it is of human or canine origin) so basically I find myself in a downsized version of ‘up shit creek’. 

But then, this is our India where perhaps we are better off playing both: Spot The Pothole along with Spot The Pikachu.

7 pm: The prodigal son and I head to the beach, our dog in tow, to both get some fresh air and catch a few Pokémons. I realise that though I downloaded the app as an experiment, clutching onto a jaundiced notion that this was yet another game that would push people towards isolation and limit the time they spent in active interaction with the world, it did not pan out that way. 

Yes , it is dangerous if you don’t watch where you are going — that’s a given with anything including texting — but you can put your phone onto ‘vibrate’ mode, keep the app open and be notified when a Pokémon pops up in your area instead of peering at your screen, constantly. 

But you interact with groups of people as you walk all over the city, discovering spots you had forgotten, like old post offices and tiny monuments and the greatest incentive for middle-aged fogeys like me, is that perhaps I have found a neoteric way of bonding with the teenagers and kids in my family resorting to the old adage of ‘When you can’t beat them, join them’ but beat them to the next level up, I will.